Private pension income UC

Flossey1

Morning, I’m hoping someone can provide clarification on this. 

Myself and my husband have a joint UC claim, I work part time and my husband gets pip as he has a disability that means he can’t work. 

Back in Jan this year he was offered the chance to take 25% of his private pension which was around £13k with a monthly amount of £150.00 payable each month. I went into our UC acc to see if there was an option to declare the change of income. There was no option for this so I sent a message on the journal. Got a reply saying this will need to be reviewed manually as it’s not reported via RTI and this would be passed to the job centre and they will contact us. 

Fast forward to end of April and we get a review request asking for id, bank statements. I upload mine no problem but my husband had lost his UC login so he was given an appointment at the job centre to get a new login code. It’s agreed that as his documents are due the day after his appointment that he can preset them at his appointment. All fine; 
we ask are we there due to us notifying them of his pension? No the advisor said this is just a review. I said well we’ve been waiting for you ( the job centre) to contact us for more info and you haven’t. She said I can deal with it now: so we gave all the info of the monthly pension income and she said you now have an overpayment of £800. I said I contacted UC in Feb, they then said it was down to you and you haven’t requested the details so the claim is correct. I said so when would you have asked for the details, she said we might not and I said well then you are allowing us to be overpaid which then results in us being in debt! She was very reluctant to actually elaborate on this when I said surely that’s not right. I said you tell people to disclose any changes and when we try to you don’t do your part? She said they just expect you to keep that money to one side……which in turn will be seen as savings! Please someone sanity check me here!! This can’t be right 
sorry it’s so long but wanted to add all the details. Thank you! 

Newcad

Hi @Flossey1

Unfortunately I'm afraid that it is no use complaining that it wasn't your fault that the decuctions weren't made.
With UC all overpayments are recoverable no matter whose fault the overpayment was.

Income from a private or workplace pension is classed as 'Other Income' for UC and is deducted £ for £ from the UC payments.

If your partner has been getting £150 a month since January/February then it should have been being deducted from UC, if it hasn't been being deducted then that's an overpayment of UC.

If any amount taken as a 'Pension Commencement Lump Sum' took your savings/capital to over £6,000 then there will also be an overpayment there of £4.35 for each part of £250 that you have over 6K.
If it's taken your total savings/capital above £16,000 then you are no longer eligible for UC at all.
(A possible exception to the above is if you migrated from Tax Credits in the last 12 months with over £16k capital already. In that case you would already be paying the maximum deductions for savings)).

Anything overpaid will be one total to be repaid.
The repayments are currently 15% of your UC Standard Allowance each month.
(For a couple over 25 that should be £625.10 x 0.15 = £94.22 a month deduction until the debt has been paid back).

TBH you have probably been lucky that this review has come along before the overpayments grew to a much larger amount to be paid back.
In fact that's the whole point of such reviews, to make sure that UC is being paid correctly.

Flossey1

Hi @Newcad
Thank you for taking the time to respond. 

Yes we were lucky they did a review but also worrying it’s the only one we’ve had since moving to UC in 2018. It’s just wrong it’s one rule for them and another for people needing this benefit, who are trying to do things by the book. 

We now need to go to another meeting with proof of what debts were settled from the lump sum of £13k, one debt was paying back a informal loan from a family member and others were paying off a shortfall in car finance owing when my husbands car was wrttten off (not his fault) and a deposit for a replacement vehicle. These are all genuine debts but I am worried the one to the family member will be tricky to prove. It’s a worry being at the mercy of an assessor.